The front of Sebastopol, between English, French, and Russians, looked like a huge graveyard, covered with freshly-made mounds of dark earth in all directions. Every week one heard some such gossip as this — "The Russians have thrown up another battery over Inkerman." "Yes, the French are busy making another new battery in front of the redoubt." "Our fire will most positively open about the end of next week." We were overdoing our "positively last nights."
On the 8th a small work, armed with three heavy guns, which had been constructed very quietly, to open on the two steamers near Inkerman, under the orders of Captain Strange, began its practice early in the morning, at about 1700 yards, and drove them both away after about sixty rounds, but did not sink, or, as far as we knew, seriously disable them.
Every material for carrying on a siege — guns, carriages, platforms, powder, shot, shell, gabions, fascines, scaling-ladders — we had in abundance. The artillery force was highly efficient, notwithstanding the large proportion of young gunners. Our engineers, if not quite so numerous as they ought to have been, were active and energetic; and our army must have consisted of nearly 20,000 bayonets, owing to the great number of men discharged from the hospitals, and returned fit for duty, and to the draughts which had been received. With the exception of the Guards, who were encamped near Balaklava, reduced to the strength of a company, nearly every brigade in the army could muster many more men than they could a month before.
Of the Guardsmen sent to Scutari not more than sixty or seventy were in such a state of convalescence as to permit them to join their regiments. The men in Balaklava fared better, and the weather{238} effected a marked improvement in the health of the men in the field hospitals.
As for Jack, he was as happy as he would allow himself to be, and as healthy, barring a little touch of scurvy now and then, as he could wish; but it must be remembered that he had no advanced trenches, no harassing incessant labour to enfeeble him, and that he had been most successful in his adaptation of stray horseflesh to camp purposes, in addition to which he had a peculiar commissariat, and the supplies of the fleet to rely upon. It is a little out of place, perhaps, to tell a story here about the extraordinary notions Jack had imbibed concerning the ownership of chattels and the distinction between meum and tuum, but I may not have a better chance. A mild young officer went up one day to the sailors' camp, which he heard was a very good place to purchase a horse, and on his arrival picked out a likely man, who was gravely chewing the cud of meditation and tobacco beside the suspension bridge, formed of staves of casks, which leads across a ravine to their quarters. "Can you tell me where I can get a good horse to buy, my man!"
"Well, sir, you see as how our horse parties ain't come in yet, and we don't know what we may have this evening. If your honour could wait."
"Then you haven't got anything to sell now?"
"Ah! how I does wish your honour had a comed up yesterday. We had five regular good 'uns — harabs some on 'em was, but they was all bought up by a specklator from Ballyklava."
"So they're all gone?"
"All, that lot your honour. But," with his face brightening up suddenly, "if you should happen to want a sporting out-and-out dromeydairy, I've got one as I can let you have cheap." As he spoke, Jack pointed in great triumph to the melancholy-looking quadruped, which he had "moored stem and stern," as he expressed it, and was much disappointed when he found there was no chance of a sale.
From hunger, unwholesome food, and comparative nakedness, the camp was a sea of abundance, filled with sheep and sheepskins, wooden huts, furs, comforters, mufflers, flannel shirts, tracts, soups, preserved meats, potted game, and spirits. Nay, it was even true that a store of Dalby's Carminative, of respirators, and of jujubes, had been sent out to the troops. The two former articles were issued under the sanction of Dr. Hall, who gave instructions that the doctors should report on the effects. Where the jujubes came from I know not; but had things gone on at this rate, we might soon have heard complaints that our Grenadiers had been left for several days without their Godfrey's Cordial and Soothing Syrup, and that the Dragoons had been shamefully ill supplied with Daffy's Elixir.